Just then, as Emon had emancipated himself from the cordiality of three or four young men, and was about to step out quickly to where he saw Winny and her father standing on the road, Tom came up.
"Ah, Lennon!" he said, stretching out his hand, "I am glad to see you in this part of the country again. I hope you are quite recovered."
"Quite, thank God," said Emon, pushing by without taking his hand. "But I see Winny and her father waiting on the road, and I cannot stop to talk to you;" and he strode on. Emon left out the "Cavana" in the above sentence on purpose, because he knew the familiarity its omission created would vex Tom Murdock.
"Bad luck to your impudence, you conceited cub, you!" was Murdock's mental ejaculation as he watched the cordial greeting between him and Winny Cavana, to say nothing of her father, who appeared equally glad to see him.
Phil M'Dermott had come for company that day with Emon, and had managed to join Kate Mulvey as they came out of chapel. She had her eyes about her, and saw very well how matters had gone so far. For the first time in her life she noticed the scowl on Tom Murdock's brow as she came toward him.
"God between us and harm, but he looks wicked this morning!" thought she; and she was almost not sorry when he turned suddenly round and walked off without waiting for her so much as to "bid him the time of day."
"That's more of it," said Tom to himself. "There is that one now taking up with that tinker."
He felt something like the little boy who said, "What! will nobody come and play with me?" But Tom did not, like him, become a good boy after that.
He watched the Cavanas and Lennon, who had not left the spot where Lennon came up with them until they were joined by Kate And Phil M'Dermott, when they all walked on together, chatting and laughing as if nobody in the world was wicked or unhappy.
He dodged them at some distance, and was not a little surprised to see the whole party-"the whelp," "the tinker," and all--turn up the lane and go into Cavana's house.